Words matter. These are the best Andrew Bird Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. They’re all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. They’re tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.
The first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.
The problem is, when you’re working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn’t sound like a real collaboration.
Usually bands with violins – it’s this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that’s not the way that my music is put together.
Maybe it’s just, I’ve always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it’s history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don’t know why I have that impulse. I can’t really explain it but I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid.
Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.
All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.
Since I first picked up the violin, I’ve been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin.
I’ve done my share of busking, and it’s fun until it isn’t. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they’re so good.
Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.
I mean, you still can’t jump offstage and go read a book. But I’m getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.
What you see with your eyes when you’re making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.
I write a lot more when I’m happy, because you’re hopeful, you’re motivated.
A day off after a show with no agenda in a foreign city is about the most fertile creative situation I can imagine. Just walking with nothing to do, killing time and hearing the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar place.
The fact that I wasn’t expected to read music at all and was absorbing everything by ear… it had a huge affect on the kind of musician that I became.
Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.
I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.
I’ve always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn’t pin you down too much, like other labels would. It’s just newer, it has less baggage. I’m happy to be in that category.
I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.
A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don’t clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn’t right, it tastes awful.
Guitars are kind of just, you know, sexy, especially old vintage ones.
I create little challenges for myself, like, ‘Okay, whatever you do in this song, you’ve got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,’ or something like that.
My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you’re still learning language. It’s using the same part of the brain.
There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again.
My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.
